Installment # 60

Getting back to world events, Germany and Japan were advanced societies at the times referred to above.  We know that today there are still pockets of starvation, incidences of genocide, massive spreads of AIDS, civil wars and the like in some of the underdeveloped countries, but it is just jaw-dropping to think that advanced civilizations would do the things that have been done.  It is staggering to me that the U.S. has been getting along just fine with Japan and Germany, for instance, ever since I can remember, which is probably the late 1950s.  Heck, I arrived in Germany in 1962 – less than 20 years after the unbelievable atrocities I am now reading about – and was only dimly aware of them, at best.  It didn’t seem to be about me. It seems like whatever happened before we were born may just as well have happened 300 years ago.  Our parents, who lived through such things as young adults, evidently did not feel they needed to indoctrinate their children in hatred and distrust.  By the time we figured it out, the perpetrators were elderly or passed on.  But we still need to look at the generation of Germans and Japanese who are our contemporaries and ask, “Can I trust these people?”  “Can I respect them?”

In reading Jeff Shaara’s book, The Final Storm, subtitled “A Novel of the War in the Pacific”, I have come to an appreciation of what is was like to try to fight insanity with sanity.  In addition to being unimaginably brutal and murderous towards enemies and the civilian populations they conquered, the Japanese were convinced it was the greatest thing in the world to give their lives for their Emperor and thus go with honor to join their ancestors.  Being hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, they refused to retreat or surrender, but would kill as many enemy soldiers as possible by tactics such as pretending to surrender, then blowing themselves up in close quarters with the enemy.  At night they would jump into enemy fox holes with live hand grenades.  I read where they sent a naked Okinawa girl walking toward the enemy trenches, and when 5 or 6 soldiers stood in amazement, Japanese sharp shooters killed them all, along with the girl.  The kamikaze pilots received perhaps the most notoriety, but their fanatical belief system was shared by nearly all Japanese.  By the time all of the important islands of the Pacific leading up to mainland Japan were under American control, and the invasion of Japan was next, the military understood what they were up against.  Japan would never surrender.

The planned invasion of a half a million men, with another half a million or so to follow in a second wave, if needed, would take a year to succeed, and cost many thousands of American lives.  The only sensible course was the atomic bomb.  The number of Japanese civilians killed is considered to be much less than the number that would have been killed in an invasion, based on the way the Japanese military would use civilians as booby traps.  As mentioned, the fanatical belief system of the Japanese was not confined to the military.  Many of the civilians would be similarly honored to die for their glorious cause.  American soldiers would be faced – not for the first time – with having to kill apparently unarmed civilians, apparently trying to surrender, for fear of their treachery.  Again: You can’t fight insanity with sanity.  Again: Can I trust these people even now?  Who are they?  How do they think?

I was lamenting to Aunt Dot recently about how I wish I had taken an interest in history as a young person; that it was too bad that my attitude – and probably the attitude of most young people – was “who cares?” “What’s that got to do with me?”  In one of the many ways that makes Aunt Dot so special, she told me (at 93, mind you) that a young man needs to focus on his own life, on the people around him, on a direction for his life, on growing up, and so forth.  He should not be thinking, let alone worrying about what happened before he was born.  I was reminded that Aunt Dot had taught Sunday school for many, many years, into her mid-eighties, primarily working with 6^th grade girls. As such, she was very comfortable and confident addressing the needs of young people.  She must have been a great blessing in the lives of many girls who went on to be outstanding wives and mothers.

On the other hand, one of my old running buddies was an absolute fountain of knowledge on so many things of the past, that I had to ask him how he could possibly find the time, let alone the motivation, to research and read and retain so much detailed information.  All he could say was that you have to have an insatiable curiosity.  You couldn’t merely wonder or find it interesting.  So that’s part of it.  Even today, I am interested, but not to the extent that I would pursue the knowledge in such breadth and depth.  This was before the days of the Internet, by the way.  He must have poured over encyclopedias, history books, historical novels, old black and white film, etc.  I might add that he was a professional in business management, was married, raised at least one child, and was a dedicated, high level runner/racer for years, which takes a lot of time-consuming training.  He might have disagreed with Aunt Dot, if they had ever met and spoke of these things.

I think of the Klu Klux Klan in the U.S., the pockets of militia and other extremist groups around.  But they remain small and basically shunned by main stream Americans and our governmental authorities.  How would a group like that ever come to power and take control?  When we see that it has happened elsewhere in the world, and fairly recently, we need to remain vigilant about balancing individuals’ rights with the greater good of society at large.  In War and Remembrance (page 610) a German doctor, claiming to be against what the Nazis were doing, tries to tell his American patient that such a thing could happen in America, or anywhere for that matter.  He tries to make his case thusly: “Extremism is the universal tuberculosis of modern society: a world infection of resentment and hatred generated by rapid change and the breakdown of old values.  In the more stable nations the tubercles are sealed off in scar tissue, and these are the harmless lunatic movements.  In times of social disorder, depression, war, or revolution, the germs can break forth and infect the nation.”  Of course, America has been through all of these: depression, war, revolution, and social disorders such as the our own Civil War and reconstruction of the South, the assassination of the president who issued the emancipation proclamation; the Civil Rights movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King; the Vietnam War protests and the impeachment of President Nixon, the assassination of President Kennedy, etc; yet nothing has come close to allowing a “lunatic movement” to flourish and grow and take over our institutions.

One difference that I am aware of, at least in comparing the United States with some of the countries of the Middle East, is that we have the Intelligence Community and the Military Community separate from each other and both under the control of the civil government, that is, the President.  (Remember that the President of the United States is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces). In the countries that seem to breed or harbor or abet terrorists, these three communities are entities unto themselves, separate from each other, and the religious leaders represent a fourth power, influencing the other three to a greater or lesser degree.  There is no central control.  We do a lot of finger-pointing here, but they must just throw their hands up in the air and give up.  No segment seems to be strong enough to stop the others.  In addition to ultimate authority being centralized in the civilian government, the U.S. constitution prohibits a “national” religion, and this over the years has discouraged any one religious group from becoming dangerously influential.  I recall when John F. Kennedy was being considered for the Democratic nominee for President that news commentators were pointing out that, as a Roman Catholic, there could be a concern among voters that the Pope might have too much influence over him; that this might give his Republican rival an edge with the voters.

But having seen what can happen in advanced countries like Germany and Japan, we in the U.S. need to make sure we do not elect a President who turns out to be such a strong, clever tyrant that he manages to co-opt the military and/or the intelligence community before our built-in safeguards can come into play.  We have already seen instances of cover-ups and denials of knowledge or responsibility that are clearly lies.  We have seen where the Chairs of senate committees have been kept in the dark by the White House.  I wonder what would happen if the newly-elected President was required to have his opponent serve as his vice-president.  For one thing, maybe the candidates wouldn’t vilify and demonize one another if they knew they were going to need to work together.  On the other hand, the grid-lock and partisan bickering that we see in Congress now might reach new heights in the White House, and truly nothing would get done.

Putting my economics hat back on for a minute, the theoretical downfall of capitalism, for me, has been overcome by something I would not have seen coming: consumerism, the rise of the middle class, and the insatiable demand for more and better goods and services.  I would have thought competition would have kept laborers and businesses at a subsistence level.  Workers would compete against each other, with jobs going to whoever would do adequate work for the least amount of money; and businesses would need to keep their costs and profits at a minimum, and product quality adequate, in order to compete on price with the other suppliers in their industries.  It also seemed to me that low cost labor could produce far more goods than the economy could consume.  Low paid labor would produce products that they themselves could not afford to buy, and there were just not enough wealthy people to buy all the products produced.  Excess production and an impoverished working class would be the Achilles Heel of capitalism.

But then there is that human nature thing again that has never been obvious to me.  People always want more and better, to my great surprise.  When the compact disc first came out, for example, I thought, “Who in the world would go to the trouble and expense of replacing their tape players and record players just to get a little better sound?  I mentioned the transitions to color and high density TV earlier; my attitude towards jewelry, etc.  Imagine my surprise when I found that the average American woman ‘needed’ dozens of pairs of shoes and scores of tops, or that anyone would spend $1,000 for a purse!  When asked what I want for a gift, I am somewhat at a loss.  I have no felt needs to speak of.  These days I often receive gift cards, and I go looking for bargain-priced CDs or books.  I don’t want anyone paying those ridiculous prices for new CDs or books for me.

I’ve noticed that women seem to look forward to every holiday, birthday, anniversary, etc, as opportunities to give gifts to others.  Amy explained that the idea is to give someone something that they would not ordinarily buy for themselves; something a little too expensive or frivolous.  The recipient, in turn, does the same. I’m not sure I pointed out to her, or even needed to point out to her, that the net result is that each person in effect buys something that is too expensive or frivolous.  They can’t justify buying such things for themselves, so they buy them for each other.  Is it a conspiracy, or just consumerism at its finest…the driving force of the American economy?  When one of our Amway leaders was accused of being materialistic, he said, “I’ll tell you what is materialistic: buying things that you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t even like.  That’s not what we teach in Amway.”

As long as I am on the subject, it amazes me how many people and how much money there is in industries such as fashion, cosmetics, jewelry, weight loss, fitness and beauty.  It seems so shallow to me, but I “go along in order to get along,” as the saying goes.  As mentioned elsewhere, I don’t have strong opinions or convictions, and am always ready to shrug and think maybe I am the one who just doesn’t get it.  How do I know I am right?  Is it worth isolating myself and hurting people’s feelings just because I don’t understand the unbelievable importance of these things in the lives of others?  We have a tongue-in-cheek saying, “It doesn’t matter what you do in life; it’s how you look while you are doing it!” We acknowledge how superficial the whole thing is, but how hooked we are on it, nevertheless.  Sandy and I were sitting in a restaurant recently when two couples walked in and took a table near us.  For some reason I noticed how they handled their purses, and then I noticed that Sandy was noticing.  To my question she said that, yes, she was evaluating the two women by noting the brand and quality of their purses, among other things.  Yikes!

A sad and unfortunate result of all this focus and emphasis on appearance has come from the inevitable extremes:  Body image issues among women has led to complex, sometimes fatal maladies such as anorexia; and among men has led to the misuse of steroids and other “performance enhancing” drugs which, in turn, has had complex, sometimes fatal consequences, as well.  The reader can Google ‘anorexia’ for more complete and exact information; but here I am thinking of extreme, unhealthy weight loss as a result of an unreasonable desire to be thinner than any normal person would think wise, often stemming from the fashion industry’s use of unusually thin models, and the subliminal message that these models represent an ideal of some sort.  The industry has said that their clothing shows to best affect when worn on super thin models.  Perhaps that is all it takes for some women to decide that if they want to look their best, they had better be as thin as the models.  How that goes from a desire to an obsession, however, is a subject for the experts.  Suffice it to say that my generation witnessed an alarming trend that now seems to be under better control.  I guess it started in the mid 1960s with the rise to fame of perhaps the first “super model,” a British teen called “Twiggy.”  She was named “The face of 1966” and voted British Woman of the Year!  By 1967 she was on the cover of Vogue Magazine.

The equivalent body image issue among the men has to do with the body builders.  There are a variety of legal and illegal substances, ranging from harmless to extremely dangerous, that men may resort to in their quests for – in their opinions – the most awesome or most impossibly perfect bodies. Here again the experts can try to explain how and why people cross over from the healthy pursuit of a healthy body to the unhealthy pursuit of the unnatural extremes.  The misuse of steroids (to use the umbrella term) can lead not only to freakish-looking bodies, but to freakish, violent behavior – what they call a “‘roid rage”.  For other sports, such as professional baseball and road racing, steroids or “performance enhancing drugs” enable the athlete to train harder and recover more quickly, in order to then train even harder and more frequently.  For these athletes it is more about performance and achievement than appearance; and frankly it is more about money: the body builders are generally not in it for the money.

For the women, at least, the pendulum has (predictably?) swung back the other way.  We now have numerous celebrity role models who are noticeably overweight and, if not proud of it, at least resigned to it and proud of their defiant attitudes about it.  When Kelley Clarkson was looking for Mr. Right, she acknowledged in an interview that, as she put it, “I have a lot of junk in the trunk!”  She wasn’t planning on getting rid of it, but on finding a man who would like her that way.  The central message from the “Plus Size” celebrities is that you can have it all – great career, financial success, hot husband, great self-image, etc – no matter how much extra weight you are carrying.  While some people still want to look like Twiggy, many now appreciate the Plus Size celebrities and see them as acceptable alternatives.